Maharashtra reports 1,233 coronavirus cases, Mumbai crosses 10K

Maharashtra recorded a staggering 1,233 new coronavirus (COVID-19) cases and 34 deaths, with Mumbai crossing the 10,000-case mark, officials said here on Wednesday.

With 34 fatalities, the state death toll shot up to 651 and the total number of coronavirus patients increased to 16,758.

Given the increasing number of cases and deaths, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray appealed to the defence, railways, ports and all other central undertakings in the state to give their premises as well as ICU beds for COVID-19 patients.

He made a personal appeal to Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Railways, ports and other central organisations stationed in Maharashtra, to take care of the fresh influx expected after the lockdown is lifted and international flights resume operations.

Meanwhile, Health Minister Rajesh Tope said the state government has ordered all private doctors -- around 15,000 in Mumbai -- to either restart their clinics and nursing homes, or work for government hospitals in view of the coronavirus situation.

"We are also appealing to all private doctors to work at least 15 days in government hospitals and keep their clinics/nursing homes open, and failure to comply would attract action," he said.

Tope added that the state presently has 54 testing labs including 24 in the private sector and 30 in government, where a total of around 8,000-10,000 COVID-19 tests are carried out daily, which is one of the reasons for the high number of cases coming to light.

The state government is in the process of setting up a 1,000-bed hospital for isolating and treating COVID-19 patients at the Bandra-Kurla Complex grounds which will be operational by the month-end.

Of the total 34 deaths, 25 were recorded in Mumbai alone -- taking the city toll to 412 while the number of COVID-19-positive patients in the city shot up by 769 to 10,714.

Dharavi alone recorded 68 new cases, taking the total in Asia's biggest slum to 733 cases and 21 deaths.

Besides Mumbai's 26 deaths, Pune recorded three fresh deaths as did Akola while one death each was recorded in Jalgaon and Solapur.

The dead comprised 21 men and 13 women, and nearly 79 percent of them suffered from other serious ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, heart problems and asthma.

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region (Thane Division) continued to cause major worries with 441 COVID-19 deaths and 12,716 patients, followed by Pune Division with 132 deaths and 2,351 patients, Nashik Division with 31 deaths and 632 positive cases, Aurangabad Division with 12 deaths and 441 patients, and Akola Division with 20 deaths and 273 patients.

On the positive side, 275 fully cured patients returned home, taking the number of those discharged to 3,094.

Meanwhile, the number of people in home quarantine increased to 211,112 and those in institutional quarantine increased from 12,456 to 13,107 while and the state's containment zones increased from 943 to 1,048 today.

As many as 11,692 teams have carried out a survey of a population of around 51.1 lakhs in the state till date.